Secure Roaming in 802.11 Networks

Chapter 1

In the following two sections we provide generic descriptions of hard and soft handoffs. Since

the descriptions are intended to be generic, they do not faithfully follow the handoff details of

any one cellular technology.

1.8.3 Hard Handoffs

Figure 1.13 illustrates the relationships between the concepts presented in Section 1.8.2 during

the course of a hard handoff. The hard handoff implies an abrupt break in the path that the user

signaling takes, as it is routed into the network infrastructure. We see in Figure 1.13 that con-

trol signaling is taking place to both antennae 1 and 2 during both intervals I

pho

and I

fho

. The

user traffic is only ...